Palestinian Blackmail

by Prof. Efraim Inbar

The Palestinian Authority decided unilaterally to apply for membership to 15 U.N. agencies in order to demonstrate its uneasiness about the lack of progress with the American-sponsored peace negotiations and to buttress its claims to statehood. While this amounts also to a violation of its promise to refrain from going to the U.N. as long as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry continues his diplomatic efforts, the PA expressed its willingness to continue the negotiating process, but expects to get a better deal than the one Kerry worked on.

 

Several lessons should be drawn from recent events. Palestinian behavior is obviously an affront to the U.S. Even the weak PA, headed by a powerless and hardly legitimate leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has the temerity to challenge the U.S. As we know this type of behavior has happened elsewhere on the globe, and is an additional indication of the poor international standing of the U.S. under President Barack Obama.

 

The recent events in the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic track reinforce a lesson many stubbornly refuse to learn -- reaching a comprehensive agreement between Israel and the Palestinians has remained an elusive goal. The gap in the positions of the two sides is too large to bridge even by a creative diplomacy backed by a superpower. The two sides still display tremendous energies to fight for things that are important to them. Peace and coexistence are not the most important goals of the two warring societies. Therefore, the strategy of conflict resolution needs to be replaced by a more realistic approach of conflict management. The good intentions of the international community should be directed towards minimizing the suffering on both sides rather than ending the conflict.

 

At the same time, Israel should seriously consider the wisdom of continuing to go along with the preferences of the international community to implement the two-state paradigm when evidence mounts that this paradigm is not working. The attempt to impose a statist rationale on the Palestinian national movement by hoping that a proto-statist structure such as the PA would behave like Jordan or Egypt has failed.

 

The PA has failed to meet the main test of statehood -- monopoly over use of force. As result, it lost control over all its territory and Hamas is ruling Gaza, where these radical terrorists are hardly building a friendly state. Furthermore, the PA has developed into a dictatorial and corrupt political entity, hardly deserving the aid of enlightened states. More importantly, it is educating its children to hate Jews, while suicide bombers are the role model for Palestinian youth. The chances of the PA developing into a responsible peaceful state are almost nil.

 

Indeed, a huge majority of the Israelis fully understand that the current Palestinian leaderships in the West Bank, and obviously in Gaza, are not real partners for peace. Under such circumstances, Israel's interest in making concessions to the Palestinians just to keep their participation in useless talks is questionable. After all, the Palestinians need Israel more than vice versa. Abbas is still ruling primarily due to the efforts of the Israeli security measures to clean the West Bank of Hamas and Jihadist elements that are trying to take over the PA. Moreover, without the economic umbilical cord to Israel the Palestinians will suffer economic hardships.

 

Therefore, Israeli concessions and gestures to keep the Palestinians talking without any Palestinian quid pro quo make no sense. Releasing convicted terrorists, in particular, is counterproductive. It undermines the Israel's deterrence and its justice; it puts back on the streets individuals intent on harming Israelis; and it radicalizes Palestinian society that welcomes them as national heroes. Furthermore, since 1993 the Palestinians have shown zero flexibility, refusing to budge from their maximalist demands. They still insist on dividing Jerusalem, reject Israeli security demands and refuse to accept Jewish national rights.

 

Unilateral measures and threats should be answered in kind. A competition in unilateral measures favors a stronger Israel over a dependent and weak PA. Israel can make the lives of the Palestinians much less good and if they forget this fact of life, they need a reminder. Power politics is what everybody understands in the Middle East. In this region, fear is a better political currency than compassion and fairness.

 

The Palestinian threats to go to the U.N. and international organizations are empty. Nothing can change the reality on the ground without the acquiescence of Israel. For example, the acceptance of Palestine by UNESCO did not change the lives of the Palestinians one iota. Israel should also stop fearing Palestinian accusations at the International Criminal Court. Regular concessions to the Palestinians for not taking this course of action expose Israel to continuous blackmail. It is time to call their bluff and make everyone face the consequences.

 

Hopefully, Israel's government will stop the habit of paying the Palestinians to sit and talk. It is high time to remind the Palestinians that the decisions in Jerusalem will, to a large extent, determine their fate.

 

 

Professor Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7971

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The New Israel Fund—Civil Rights or Political Warfare: An Exchange

by Evelyn Gordon


FrontPage Editor’s note: In her March 28 post “An Alternative Model for Pro-Israel Liberals,” Evelyn Gordon compared the work of philanthropist Robert Price to that of the New Israel Fund and J Street. The New Israel Fund’s Naomi Paiss has written in defense of her group. Evelyn Gordon’s response follows.

In the latest paternalistic attack on pro-Israel progressives, Evelyn Gordon attempted to save liberals from themselves. By equating the New Israel Fund and J Street with disloyalty to Israel, she resurrects a disproven canard now only used by those with an ultra-nationalist political agenda. Her depiction of the New Israel Fund (NIF) and our grantees is particularly scathing. And wrong.

The New Israel Fund has always prided itself on being a cutting-edge organization. We gave Israel’s first rape crisis centers their seed money, we were the only organization outside of Israel to support the 2011 social justice protests, and our partners have been instrumental in shaping Israel’s human-rights law and policy.  We were also the first funders of Arab civil society in Israel. 

Our support in the Arab sector has always been multi-faceted. We fund employment and empowerment opportunities for Arab youth at-risk around the country. We work to redress unequal funding to Arab schools and communities. We fight for greater Arab representation on public bodies and committees. And no one does more for Arab and Bedouin women, on issues ranging from polygamy and honor killings to drastically increasing their ability to become leaders in their communities. A glance at our website and list of just our current grantees could have spared COMMENTARY the embarrassment of running a column so contrary to fact.

And, yes, we proudly fund groups like Adalah and Mossawa who engage in critical work on behalf of the Palestinian Israeli communities they serve, using strategies of litigation and community organizing.

Gordon’s depiction of Adalah as undermining Israel and exacerbating anti-Arab discrimination is simply ludicrous. Funding Adalah means that Palestinian Israelis have a voice in the Israeli courts. In 2011, Adalah won a precedent-setting case on behalf of the Palestinian Israeli Zubeidat family, whose application to move into the town of Rakefet was rejected on the basis that they were “socially unsuitable” to live in the town. Last year, another Adalah petition resulted in the cancellation of 51 demolition orders in the unrecognized Negev Bedouin village of Alsira. Although unrecognized, Alsira has been in existence since before the founding of Israel. If carried out, the demolition would have left more than 400 homeless.  

Adalah’s work often benefits other marginalized groups, including achieving a victory a few years ago permitting Israelis—all Israelis—receiving social welfare benefits to own cars, thereby enlarging their employment opportunities.

In the U.S., groups working to promote and protect minority rights are lauded. Just look at the NAACP, La Raza, or for that matter, the ADL. Some factions in Israel, however, have been keen to vilify not only the specific work of groups working for minority rights, but the mere right of such groups to exist.

Israelis, though, are keenly aware of the issues facing minority populations. In a recently published report on racism in Israel, an astounding 95 percent of Israelis expressed concern about racism in the country. And only a little over 10 percent felt the government response was adequate. 

Minority rights for the Arab community often come hand in hand with progress for other marginalized sectors. The big-tent Coalition Against Racism is one group gaining traction in the efforts to make Israel more inclusive. A broad partnership spanning the Israeli spectrum, the group is made up of organizations representing Palestinian Israelis, Mizrachim, Ethiopians, Russians, the Reform movement, the social justice movement, and more. The coalition is an unprecedented endeavor. Rarely in Israel do such disparate groups come together to discuss and formulate joint solutions to make Israel a more just and equal society for everyone. The NIF-supported coalition, who just visited the U.S. to an enthusiastic reception by American Jewish groups, is an amazing model that represents the best of Israel.

We at the New Israel Fund believe in a broad-based and integrated approach to changing Israeli society. And that is exactly why it is so critical to support the civil society groups engaged in our work on the ground, and why our fundraising has increased every year while that of other Jewish organizations is stagnant or declining. American Jews do have a heartfelt investment in the liberal values of democracy, equality, and social justice. Their investment in NIF means they understand that the activists and organizations we support are working for a better Israel.  

Naomi Paiss is the Vice President for Public Affairs at the New Israel Fund

Evelyn Gordon replies:

Naomi Paiss argues that NIF supports a wide spectrum of activity in Israel, citing the fund’s list of current grantees to prove this point. This list indeed includes many unexceptionable organizations–groups that, even if I disagree with them, genuinely strive to improve Israel according to their own lights. And if funding them were all NIF did, neither I nor most other Israelis would have any problem with its operations.

But these innocuous grantees don’t change the fact that NIF also funds many organizations actively engaged in political warfare against Israel. Thus every donation to NIF that isn’t earmarked for a specific organization ends up funding anti-Israel political warfare.

To take just one example, numerous NIF-funded organizations contributed to the infamous Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of “war crimes” during its 2009 war in Gaza and recommended indicting it in the International Criminal Court. Many of these groups remain NIF grantees to this day, including Adalah, Breaking the Silence, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Bimkom, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, and Physicians for Human Rights. The Goldstone Report’s anti-Israel slurs have been so discredited that even its lead author has repudiated it. The commission’s mandate was thus to arrive at a predetermined verdict—or in other words, to conduct political warfare against Israel rather than honestly to investigate the facts. Consequently, the organizations that submitted anti-Israel allegations to it knowingly contributed to this warfare. Yet the NIF apparently has no problem with its grantees engaging in such activity.

Nor was the Goldstone Report an aberration: Many NIF grantees routinely spend more time and effort libeling Israel overseas than trying to reform it at home. Take, for instance, Breaking the Silence, whose stated mission is “to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories” by disseminating “testimony” from former soldiers about alleged crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces. But most Israelis know BTS’s claims of widespread abuse are false. Moreover, BTS refuses to divulge details that would enable the IDF to investigate its allegations and (if warranted) prosecute the perpetrators–something that would actually benefit the country by helping to squelch any abuses that do occur. For both reasons, the organization has found little traction at home.

So instead, BTS began taking its “testimony” on tour to college campuses throughout the U.S.–places that are already hotbeds of anti-Israel activity, and where there’s no ready supply of IDF veterans to refute its allegations. Smearing the IDF to American college students does nothing to change the army’s behavior, but it does erode Israel’s support overseas. In short, it’s simply anti-Israel political warfare.

This brings us to Ms. Paiss’s second main argument: that even the grantees I consider problematic also do much laudable work, and therefore deserve support. Here, my response is the same as it was with respect to supporting NIF itself: If these organizations confined themselves to, say, bringing anti-discrimination lawsuits, I’d have no problem with NIF supporting them. But Adalah, ACRI, Bimkom, BTS, PCATI, and many other NIF grantees also spend a lot of time and money on anti-Israel political warfare. Thus by funding these organizations, NIF is funding that warfare–and that’s true even if the grant is earmarked for other purposes, since money is fungible.

Adalah, whose activities Ms. Paiss defends at great length, is an excellent example: In addition to its submissions to Goldstone, it has urged other countries to refer Israel to the ICC, to “re-evaluate their relationship with Israel” and to end “normal relations” with it. It co-authored a report that accuses Israel of being “a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.” It drafted and still promotes a “democratic constitution” that would eradicate the Jewish state by mandating a “right of return” for millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees, end Israel’s role as a safe haven for Jews worldwide by abolishing the Law of Return, grant Arab parties a de facto veto over all legislation, and more. All this, incidentally, would seem to violate two of the NIF’s own funding guidelines: Adalah “Works to deny the right of the Jewish people to sovereign self-determination within Israel” via projects like its “democratic constitution,” and “Employ[s] racist or derogatory language” by hurling slanders like “apartheid” at Israel. And the same goes for many other NIF grantees (NGO Monitor has an excellent summary here; clicking on its links provides additional detail). 


Evelyn Gordon

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/04/04/the-new-israel-fund-civil-rights-or-political-warfare-an-exchange/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Syria Is What Happens When Islam Wins

by Daniel Greenfield

Saudi Arabia and Qatar aren’t talking to each other. Syria and Turkey are shooting at each other. Not only are the Shiites and Sunnis killing each other in Syria, but the Sunni groups have been killing each other for some time now. There are even two or three Al Qaedas fighting each other over which of them is the real Al Qaeda.

There’s something about Syria that splits down everything and everyone. Even Hamas had to split between its political and military wings when choosing between Iran’s weapons and Qatar’s money. Doing the logical thing, the military wing took the weapons and the political wing took the money so that the military wing of Hamas supported Assad and its political wing supported the Sunni opposition.
 
It’s not however money and weapons that splits Muslims over Syria. Money and weapons are only the symbols. What they represent is Islam. And what Islam represents is the intersection between identity and power.
 
A modern state derives its power from its identity. The Japanese and the Russians were willing to die in large numbers for their homeland during WW2. Both countries had undergone rapid de-feudalization turning peasants into citizens. Japan and Russia however had historic identities to draw on. The rapid de-feudalization in the Arab world had messier results because countries such as Jordan and Syria were Frankenstein’s monsters made out of bits and pieces of assembled parts of history stuck together with crazy glue.
 
The Middle East is full of flags, but most are minor variations on the same red, green, black and white theme. The difference between the Palestinian flag and the Jordanian flag is a tiny asterisk on the chevron representing the unity of the Arab peoples. The Iraqi flag was originally the same as the Jordanian and Palestinian flags. So are most of the flags in the region which are based on the Arab Revolt flag which was in turn based on the colors of the Caliphates.
 
Every time you see the Al Qaeda “black flag” of Jihad, it’s already represented in the black stripes on the flags of every Arab nation. What Al Qaeda has done is strip out the other colors representing the various succeeding caliphates and gone back all the way to the black of Mohammed’s war flag.
 
What is Syria? The civil war answered that question. Like the USSR, it’s a prison of nations. It exists only by virtue of men pointing guns at other men. As long as all the men with the guns agreed on what Syria was, the country existed. Once they no longer did, there was no longer a Syria. The same is true of much of the Middle East.
 
There are questions that you can resolve with democracy within a functioning country, but when your country has less of an existence than the conflicting religious and ethnic identities of its people, democracy only makes the problem worse. Democracy in Iraq means Shiites voting to be Shiite, Sunnis voting to be Sunni and Kurds voting to be Kurds. Democracy in Syria would mean the same thing. And that way lies a federation and then secession and civil war all over again.
 
The problem in the Middle East isn’t a lack of democracy. It’s the lack of anything to be democratic about.
 
Everyone in the Middle East (who isn’t a Jew, Christian, Kurd, Bahai, Zoroastrian, Armenian, Circassian, Druze, etc.. ) agrees on the importance of Arab and Islamic unity and that their specific flavor of it, their clan, their tribe and their Islamic interpretation should be supreme.

It’s not surprising that the Middle East is constantly at war. It’s only a wonder that the fighting ever stops.
 
Arab nationalism is the ideology that Arab elites used to complete the de-feudalization of their population from peasants into citizens. But what worked in Japan and Russia fell flat in the Middle East where tribe and religion are still supreme. The peasants didn’t become Egyptians or Syrians. They remained Ougaidat or Tarabin. After that, they were Muslim. Their national identity came a distant third.
 
What the Arab Spring truly showed is how little national identity mattered as democracy and the fall of governments demonstrated that there was no national consensus, only the narrower one of class, tribe and institution. It’s not something that Americans should be too smug about. The left’s efforts are reducing the United States to the same balkanized state in which there is a black vote and a white vote, a rich vote and a poor vote, but no national identity that transcends them. We too are becoming ‘Sunnis’ and ’Shiites’. It’s no wonder that Islam finds the post-American United States and the disintegrating territories of the European Union fertile ground for its work.
 
It’s the same reason why Islam is rising in the Middle East.
 
Islam rose out of the death of the Roman Empire. It’s rising now out of the death of the West, but it would be a mistake to call that a clash of civilizations when it’s civilization succumbing to barbarism.

Hasan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, wrote, “Our task is to stand against the flood of modernist civilization.” Syria is the desert that remains when the flood of civilization has passed.

Islam can’t unite Syria. It can’t even unite Sunni Islamists. It can’t even unite those Salafis who identify with Al Qaeda.
 
It can’t unite, because Islam is a disruptive force that achieves its unity through violence. It’s a supremacist ideology whose final solution is always the sword. Mohammed won his debates by killing his enemies. A rising Islam is forcing Christians out of the Middle East while obsessively hurling its force against the Jewish State. But it doesn’t end there. A religion that can’t co-exist with other religions… also can’t co-exist with itself.
 
How do Muslims settle religious arguments with each other? The same way they settle them with Jews and Christians. That is what we are seeing in Syria.
 
At its barest minimum, civilization is co-existence. Islam is the opposite of co-existence and of civilization. Its sheer age only means that there is even more in its past to fight over.
 
Islam is the conscious abandonment of civilization and co-existence for the nomadic life of the Jihadi who drifts from place to place, his weapons on his back, destroying cities and farms, taking anything and anyone he likes, and moving on to the next fight and the next burning city.
 
The Jihadist is at war with civilization, with the city, the family and the settled way of existence. He is a nomadic raider rolling back time to pre-history. He is the savage warrior of the savage past.
Syria is what happens when Islam wins. When Islam wins, civilization loses.

Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/syria-is-what-happens-when-islam-wins/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

War Across the Borders

by Jonathan Spyer

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki

It has become a commonplace to claim that the unrest in the Arab world is challenging the state borders laid down in the Arab world following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.

 

This claim, however, is only very partially valid. It holds true in a specific section of the Middle East, namely the contiguous land area stretching from Iran’s western borders to the Mediterranean Sea, and taking in the states currently known as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

 

In this area, a single sectarian war is currently taking place. The nominal governments in Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut may claim to rule in the name of the Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese peoples. But the reality of power distribution in each of these areas shows something quite different.

 

In each of these areas, local, long suppressed differences between communities are combining with the region-wide cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia to produce conflict, discord and latent or open civil war.

 

In each case, sectarian forces are linking up with their fellow sect members (or co-ethnics, if that’s a word, in the case of the Kurds) in the neighboring “country” against local representatives of the rival sect.

 

Let’s take a look at the rival coalitions. These are not simply theoretical constructs. The cooperation between the relevant sides is largely overt, and has been extensively verified.

 

On one side, there are the Shia (and Alawi) allies of Iran. These are the Maliki government in Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, and Hizballah, the Iranian proxy force which dominates Lebanon.

 

Both Hizballah and the Maliki government, at the behest of Iran, have played a vital role in the survival of Bashar Assad and his current resurgence.

 

Hizballah’s role is well-documented. The movement maintains around 5,000 fighters at any one time in Syria. They have just completed a spearhead role in a nearly year long campaign to drive the rebels from the area adjoining the Lebanese border. They are also deployed in Damascus.

 

Assad’s Achilles heel throughout has been the lack of committed fighters willing to engage on his behalf. Hizballah, working closely with Iran, has played a vital role in filling that gap.

 

In addition, Hizballah is working hard to suppress any Sunni thoughts of insurrection in Lebanon itself. Its forces cooperated with the Lebanese Army in crushing Sunni Islamists in Sidon in June, 2013. It also offers support to Alawi elements engaged in a long running mini-war with pro-Syrian rebel Sunnis in the city of Tripoli.

 

Maliki’s role on behalf of Assad is less well-reported but no less striking.

 

It is first of all worth remembering that the Iraqi prime minister spent from 1982-90 in exile in Iran, and his political roots and allegiances are, unambiguously, to Shia Islamism.

 

Regular overflights and ground convoys have used Iraqi territory since the start of the Syrian civil war to carry vital Iranian arms and supplies from Iran to Assad’s forces in Syria.

 

A western intelligence report obtained by Reuters in late 2012 confirmed this, noting that “planes are flying from Iran to Syria via Iraq on an almost daily basis, carrying IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) personnel and tens of tons of weapons to arm the Syrian security forces and militias fighting against the rebels.”

 

It also asserted that Iran was “continuing to assist the regime in Damascus by sending trucks overland via Iraq” to Syria.

 

In addition, Iraqi Shia volunteers from the Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigades and other formations have helped to fill Bashar’s gap in available and committed infantry.

 

The Maliki government has made no effort to stop the flow of such fighters across the border – even as it engages in a U.S.-supported counter insurgency against Sunni jihadis in western Anbar province in Iraq.

 

So the Iran-led regional bloc is running a well-coordinated, well-documented single war in three countries.

 

The Sunni Arab side of the line is predictably more chaotic and disunited. On this side, too, there are discernible links, but no single, clear alliance.

 

Unlike among the pro-Iran bloc, only the most radical fringe of the Sunnis cross the borders to engage in combat. There is no Sunni equivalent to the Qods Force cadres active in Syria and Lebanon.

 

Among the Sunni radicals, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group now controls a single contiguous area stretching from eastern Syria to western Anbar province in Iraq, and taking in Fallujah city in Iraq.

 

Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian franchise of al-Qaeda, is now active also in Lebanon. It has on a number of occasions penetrated Hizballah’s security sanctum in the Dahiyeh neighborhood of south Beirut.

 

More broadly, Saudi Arabia is the patron of the Sunni interest in both Lebanon and Syria.

 

It is currently backing rebel forces in the south of Syria, and pro-Saudis dominate the Syrian National Coalition, which purports to be the political leadership of the rebellion.

 

It also supports and promotes the March 14th movement in Lebanon, and recently pledged $3 billion for the Lebanese Armed Forces – presumably in a bid to build a force that could balance Hizballah.

 

But both Qatar and Turkey also play an important role in backing the Syrian rebels, and have their own clients among the fighting groups.

 

Saudi and Turkish fear and distrust of radical Sunni Islamist fighting groups prevent the emergence of a clear “Sunni Islamist international” to rival the Shia international of Iran.

 

Still, it is undeniable that cooperation exists among the various Sunni forces in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

 

It’s just that it’s a complicated and sometimes chaotic criss-crossing of various rival interests and outlooks on the Sunni side, rather than a coherent single bloc.

 

And finally, of course, there is a single contiguous area of Kurdish control stretching from the Iraq-Iran border all the way to deep within Syria. This zone of control is divided between the Iraqi Kurds of the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Syrian Kurds of the rival, PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD).

 

Once again, it is a contiguous area of control based on ethnic affiliation.

 

None of this means that the official borders of these three countries are going to officially disappear in the immediate future. The U.S. administration and others are committed to their survival, so they are likely to survive for now, in the semi-fictional and porous state in which they currently exist.

 

This, however, should not obscure the more crucial point that the entire area between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea is currently the site of a single war, following a single dynamic, fought between protagonists defined by ethnic and sectarian loyalty.

PJmedia, 3/28/14

Jonathan Spyer

Source: http://www.gloria-center.org/2014/03/war-across-the-borders/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere: A Mother’s Plea

by Frimet Roth

One oppressively hot August morning, my daughter Malki set off with her best friend Michal to decorate with welcome signs the bedroom of another friend returning from vacation.

Afterward, Malki called me to say that she and Michal were heading to the city center. There she would catch a bus to a summer camp counselors’ meeting in another Jerusalem suburb. “I love you” we told each other – as we usually ended our conversations. It promised to be a day of giving and sharing like every day was for Malki.

Thirteen years later, I still love her and pine for her dreadfully. But now, the only way for me to express that is to seek justice for her murder. 

Because that same hot August morning another young woman, Ahlam Tamimi, set off on a very different type of mission. A twenty year old self-described journalism student, she took two weapons – a 10 kg. bomb and an eager suicide bomber. They proceeded to the Sbarro pizza restaurant which Tamimi had scouted days earlier. Jewish women and children frequent it at lunchtime and Tamimi liked that. As this embodiment of evil would later brag, she hungered for child victims and the more the better.

Malki and Michal had detoured from their intended route to eat there too. They were among the fifteen men, women and children who perished in the explosion.

Today, Malki and Michal lie buried side by side, while their murderer, who smiled happily to learn her tally of dead children, is free and thriving in Jordan. She frequently travels in the Arab world to incite adoring crowds to follow in her footsteps. 

In my country, my husband and I are not welcome to decry this. Parents of murdered children are hailed as heroes when they declare that they want the murderer to go unpunished. Whether for the sake of a prisoner “swap,” to prolong the negotiations with the PA or, as the cliche goes, “to promote peace.” Waiving our right to justice is considered the noble, patriotic thing to do. 

Our quest for justice, for a life sentence for Tamimi – there is no capital punishment here – has invited accusations that we are merely vengeful.

Yet nothing will convince us that freeing murderers is an acceptable, integral part of any peace process.

Malki’s murderer was released in October 2011, the beneficiary of another terrorists-walk-free deal. Some would say we should have learned to live with that reality.

Yet, with each release of terrorist murderers – tried, convicted and unrepentant – my government thrusts a fresh dagger into my heart and conveys the message again and again: ”Your child was not really murdered. And your child’s killer does not really deserve to be punished.” 

True, my leaders have been subjected to inordinate pressure to free terrorist murderers from the West, and in particular, from the US. Threats and rewards have been dangled before prime minister Bibi Netanyahu to elicit from him a travesty of justice that they themselves would never consider.

We saw that hypocrisy in sharp relief when terrorists who had not even been tried yet but were strongly suspected of murders of American soldiers were recently released from Afghani prisons. The United States government was outraged. The US embassy criticized the releases as “deeply regrettable,” a move that could lead to further violence in Afghanistan. The US military in Afghanistan warned that “release of these dangerous individuals poses a threat to U.S., Coalition and Afghan National Security Forces, as well as the Afghan population”.

It is a tight spot into which our prime minister has been rammed. Still, that is a lame excuse for releasing murderers imprisoned in Israel. Netanyahu holds the keys to their cells and the decision to use them is his and his alone. For a politician who has cast himself as a tough talker, Netanyahu has, in this instance, chosen the softest route available.

But it was a carefully-made choice.

He is a seasoned and savvy politician who knows his constituency well. In both the left and the right camps, these releases are ‘acceptable’. Terrorists are deemed currency for him to dole out whenever he sees fit. 

Unspecified calculations, secret strategies, and the deepest wisdom have been attributed to Netanyahu by his supporters to rationalize his odious actions. And so it has been left predominantly to the victims themselves to take up the fight. 

It has been a fruitless challenge.

Our prime minister has neither deigned to meet with any of us nor even to respond to our written pleas, although he did say publicly in 2011 that he had sent all of us personal letters of explanation. Surprisingly none of those personal letters ever reached any of us.

The media have played no small part in pressuring Israel. We have all been subjected to sob-stories about ex- prisoners who either maintain their innocence or their rehabilitation to garner favor. Gullible journalists like the New York Times’ Jodi Rudoren are ready willing and able to oblige with sympathetic pieces. Her most recent specimen, “Remaking a Life After Years in an Israeli Prison,” was particularly abhorrent.

Where are the pieces about the terrorists like Ahlam Tamimi who declare “I have no regrets” and who return to terrorism – as nearly 50% of them do? 

Many families of victims are incensed, pained and fearful of the consequences these releases entail. Some of us have noted that the conduct of the PA, of its chief Mahmoud Abbas and of the entire Palestinian people does not justify a gesture of this sort. They have pointed out that the celebrations and glory that are lavished on released murderers contradict their claims of a desire for peace and rejection of terrorism. They remind us of the high rate of recidivism.

But those are not the strongest arguments.

There is really only one constant, immutable, irrefutable flaw in these releases. They are unjust. Plain and simple: undeniably unjust. They isolate one category of murders from the rest and declare them less significant, less tragic, less criminal, less intolerable.

Justice, as we all know, is blind. Or at least it should be. It should be blind to the race, religion, creed and gender of both the murderer and his victim. 

These releases contravene a basic tenet of any democratic state. It is time for Netanyahu to regain his moral compass, turn back the clock, and reinstate the inviolability of Israel’s judiciary.

This time, Netanyahu needs to show some spine and say ‘no’ to the impending prisoner release.


Frimet Roth, a native New Yorker, is a freelance writer in Jerusalem. Her daughter Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in the Sbarro restaurant bombing in 2001. With her husband Arnold, she founded the Malki Foundation (www.malkifoundation.org) in their daughter’s name. It provides concrete support for Israeli families of all faiths who care at home for a special-needs child. The title of this op-ed is derived from Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frimet-roth/injustice-anywhere-is-a-threat-to-justice-everywhere-a-mothers-plea/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

UN Bodies Double-Edged Sword for Palestinians

by Tom Wilson


Speaking on Thursday night, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas declared that he would rather “become a martyr” than withdraw the applications that the Palestinians have submitted to 15 international treaties and conventions, as Israel has insisted he must do. Not one to pass up the opportunity for melodrama, Abbas’s pronouncement will hardly cause any shockwaves, but if he continues with this reckless policy of joining international bodies then Abbas may well find himself hung by his own petard. While legal experts are divided about the practical ramifications of these latest moves, there are certain international organizations that, were the PA to join them, would likely render Abbas open prosecution himself.

The events surrounding this latest Palestinian action–that likely symbolize the final blow to the latest round of talks–have already been pored over in detail, and no doubt will continue to be contested and fought over a great deal more. The simple chronology is that on Tuesday, shortly before Abbas was to meet with Secretary Kerry and while Israel was awaiting a response from Abbas to its ludicrously generous offer to release more than 400 Palestinian prisoners and partially freeze settlements in return for extending peace talks, Abbas had the PA submit requests to join 15 international conventions and treaties. This, it should be recalled, is despite the fact that the PA is obligated to refrain from such actions while talks continue through to the end of April, although strictly speaking the Oslo accords prohibit such actions in any event.

It is unclear whether the Palestinians ever directly responded to the initial Israeli offer, but instead they issued a counter-set of demands for agreeing to continue with negotiations. That list of demands essentially amounts to an itinerary of all the things that one would presume would be covered during the talks themselves. In other words, Abbas is demanding that Israel flatly agree to meet all his requirements on borders, Jerusalem, security, etc., prior to talks being resumed, at which point there would of course be nothing left to discuss. It hardly passes for what most would understand by the term “negotiation.” And if Israel doesn’t submit to all of this then apparently the Palestinians will plow ahead with their strategy of joining UN bodies.

There is, however, significant disagreement about just how damaging these moves could really be for Israel. So far it appears that in this latest round of applications the Palestinians have restricted their requests to joining treaties and conventions rather than actual UN organizations. Among the 15 they requested to join on Tuesday are the Fourth Geneva Conventions, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, the Hague Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. It has been suggested that the move toward joining the Hague Convention may be part of preparation to try and prosecute Israel over construction in Jewish communities over the 1949 armistice lines, which would include any building throughout most of Jerusalem. Other observers, such as professor Robbie Sabel of the Hebrew University, have claimed that since Israel is already bound by the Fourth Geneva Convention, it will not make any difference whether the Palestinian Authority were also to become a member.
 
Predictably, Amnesty International has welcomed these moves and condemned Israel for the threats that Cabinet ministers have made about sanctioning the Palestinian Authority for its breach of its obligations. Indeed, Amnesty International is even urging the Palestinians to go further, encouraging the PA to also submit requests to join both the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute. Yet there is good reason why the Palestinians have not already attempted this. While the statement by Amnesty International was naturally gleeful about the prospect of opening the way to bringing charges against Israel for its presence and activities in the West Bank, the statement further noted that such a move would also allow for holding the Palestinian Authority to account for its “alleged” violations. Of course, one can’t help but come away from Amnesty’s statement with the impression that Israel’s “abuses” are presumed genuine; the Palestinian Authority’s are merely “alleged,” with the statement referring to how this move would “spur the Palestinian Authority into bolstering its commitment to upholding the rights of all people.” Well, that’s certainly one commitment that if ever made, could surely do with some bolstering.

The PA’s human-rights violations against other Palestinians may not be well publicized but they are no secret either. Israel’s Economy Minister Naftali Bennett has even spoken of pursuing the PA at the ICC for its sponsorship of terrorism. That is certainly a reminder that in the event that the Palestinians were ever to join these more significant bodies, we need not assume that attempts at prosecution would be all in one direction. And it is for that very reason that Abbas will no doubt be far more cautious about applying to join the international organizations that actually carry the most significant clout. In the meantime the diplomatic war of words, threats, and counter-threats goes on. We are pretty much back to where we were before Kerry’s embarrassingly ill-conceived process began: negotiating about negotiating.


Tom Wilson

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/04/04/un-bodies-double-edged-sword-for-palestinians/

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Rebels Bombard Damascus

by Asharq Al-Awsat

Two people killed in mortar strike on city’s opera house—Syrian state news agency

London and Beirut, Asharq Al-Awsat—Syrian rebels bombarded the capital of Damascus on Saturday and Sunday, as government forces continued their attacks on rebels in Aleppo and the Damascus suburbs.


The capital Damascus was the scene of several mortar attacks over the weekend as the opponents of the Syrian government sought to deflect government pressure on the suburb of Ghouta, the site of recent government advances, which has been besieged for the past six months.

Government forces reportedly clashed with rebels around the town of Mleiha on Saturday, close to the Ghouta district, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reporting intense fighting as the Syrian army attempted to storm the rest of the town after seizing the outskirts last week.

According to reports from the Observatory, a UK-based network of Syrian activists, a mortar round reportedly struck close to the Russian embassy in the capital, though no casualties were reported.

A rebel spokesman also said a police headquarters in the city was hit, which led to the outbreak of a serious fire. Reports say 22 people were injured overall in a series of attacks on the city on Saturday.

On Sunday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported that two people had been killed by a mortar strike on Damascus’s opera house, which was the site of a major speech by President Bashar Al-Assad last year, in which he vowed to defeat the rebels.

It is not clear if the building was struck deliberately, as it is located close to several official buildings, including military and security force headquarters.

In Aleppo, rebel spokesmen said that 18 people were killed on Saturday after rebel-held parts of the city were bombed by government helicopters with improvised ‘barrel bombs.’

Meanwhile, The Syrian National Coalition announced reform plans during the meeting of its general secretariat in Istanbul on Sunday, amid continuing discord within the organization.

The Coalition, the major umbrella organization of the groups opposed to the Syrian government, declared it had formed a provisional government in opposition to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in 2011, but has been unable to impose its authority on the ground in Syria.

Abdul Rahman Al-Haj, a member of the Coalition, told Asharq Al-Awsat: “Among the amendments will be a clause which limits the number of the members of the political body. New clauses will also be added that are related to the establishment of committees to follow up the performance of transitional government ministries and play the role of monitor to ensure accountability.”

A source from the Coalition, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Asharq Al-Awsat that there were disagreements between the Coalition’s defense minister, Assad Mustapha, and the prime minister, Ahmad Tu’mah, on the appointment of the interior minister, which delayed the appointment of this post.

The source said he expected “Adnan Hazouzi, who is a doctor from Turkmen origins and with no affiliation to any political body within the Coalition, to occupy the post of minister of health.”

He added that “Mohyideen Bannanah, an independent, is expected to become minister of education despite the fact that head of the Democrats Alliance, Michel Kilo, recommended Ghassan Mortada in his place.”

Meanwhile, Coalition media coordinator Mohamed Kannan told Asharq Al-Awsat that the organization had recently received firm promises of military aid, which was supposed to start arriving following the appointments of government ministers, especially the interior minister, and the establishment of an operations room and commanders of rebel groups active across Syria.

Kannan said: “What is happening now at the Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Ministry should control these arms which should be distributed by the operations rooms in each governorate.”

He added that any type of arms would help the opposition, but that surface-to-air missiles remained the most important in the battles against the government, which makes extensive use of helicopters and combat jets.

Another source, also speaking on condition of anonymity, told Asharq Al-Awsat that promises from some states to arm the Syrian opposition started again following the failure of talks at Geneva earlier this year.

He said he expected the scope of training of opposition fighters in Jordan, which started around 18 months ago, to intensify.

The source claimed the military support will not be limited to rebel groups based in southern Syria, but refused to reveal other areas which would receive arms, though it was understood these arms would not include anti-aircraft missiles.

In a related issue, the Reuters news agency reported that two American security sources said that the US was putting the last touches to a plan to expand a covert training program for Syrian rebel fighters and provide them with light weapons.

The sources told Reuters that the US will increase its aid and send these arms to moderate groups, most of whom are in Jordan and the southern areas of Syria.

They said the new weapons would be modest and will not include surface-to-air missiles, because the US was concerned about the possibility of these advanced arms reaching extremist groups who could use them against airliners.

Caroline Akoum contributed to this report from Beirut


Asharq Al-Awsat

Source: http://www.aawsat.net/2014/04/article55330882

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Why is the US Government Easing a Critical Sanction on Iran now?

by Thomas Lifson


Iran, which is hurtling toward nuclear power status with a government intent on wiping Israel off the map and then taking on “The Great Satan” (us), just received a very helpful gift from the Obama administration, The BBC reports:

The US Treasury has granted plane manufacturer Boeing a licence to export certain spare commercial parts to Iran, a company spokesman says.
Boeing has had no public dealings with Tehran since 1979.
In a statement, the US company said the licence had been granted for the safety of flight.

Having already eased financial sanctions against Tehran, and thereby alleviated the economic deprivation that was undermining support for the mullahs’ regime, now the US is moving on to one of the other major choke holds the US and its allies have had. Iran needs its airlines to function – for both domestic and international travel -- and has been struggling to keep aloft its fleet of civilian aircraft that date from 1979 or earlier. The sanctions directly affect the government elites who must travel. And airline travel has become more dangerous in Iran:

Iran has reportedly argued that sanctions imposed after the hostage ordeal have prevented Tehran from upgrading its plane fleet and reduced the safety of its aircraft.
There have been more than 200 accidents involving Iranian planes in the past 25 years, leading to more than 2,000 deaths, reports say.

Well, behaving as a rogue state arming itself with nuclear weapons it intends to use on us should be hazardous to your health.
Iran’s promises are not very persuasive:

Under the deal brokered in November, Iran agreed to curtail its nuclear activities for six months in exchange for sanctions relief from nations including Britain, China and the US.

Remember the bumper sticker from the 70'? One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.


Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/04/why_is_the_us_government_easing_a_critical_sanction_on_iran_now.html

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